How to Find a Valorant Premier Team (and How Premier Works)

Ranked is a ladder you climb alone. Premier is different: it’s Valorant’s in-game team competition, with a team name, a tag next to your Riot ID, a weekly schedule, playoffs, and a path toward your region’s Challengers league. The catch is that it only works with a team that turns up. Here’s how Premier works, and how to find a roster that will still be there in week seven.

How Premier works

Premier runs in Stages. A Stage lasts about one Act, usually seven weeks of Weekly matches plus a playoff week, though Riot has run shorter Stages too.

• Weekly matches. Each week has one map, and the week resets on Tuesday. Your team can play up to two Best-of-1 matches a week, during the match windows set for your Zone. These are one-hour windows in the evening, local time, on at least two nights a week.
• Premier Score. In the Open to Elite divisions, a win is worth 100 and a loss 25. You need 600 to reach the playoffs in a standard seven-week Stage. Riot lowers the threshold when a Stage is shorter: it was 500 for a six-week Stage and 450 for a five-week one in 2026.
• Playoffs. These are single-elimination and Best of 1, with map picks and bans, all on one day. Brackets have up to eight teams, seeded by Premier Score. There’s a 15-minute queue window, and if you miss it you’re out.
• Practice Matches. On some days without Weekly matches, there’s a one-hour practice window against teams in your division. These matches don’t count toward your Score or your weekly limit, so they work as built-in scrims.

You don’t have to enroll. You can create a team and start playing at any point in a Stage. Check the Premier tab in the client for the current Stage’s dates and your Zone’s match windows.

What you need before you start

• SMS Verification on your Riot account, kept on for as long as you play.
• At least one ranked placement on the account.
• A clean account. Active bans or restrictions, including AFK restrictions, stop you playing, and a ban during a Stage rules you out for the rest of it.
• A PC. Premier is PC only. There’s no console Premier.
• Five to seven players. You can be on only one Premier team at a time.

There’s no rank minimum for Open to Elite. Your team’s division comes from the MMR of your top five players, so a mixed-rank group of friends can play. Expect to face teams at your combined level.

Pick your Zone carefully

When you create a team, you pick a Zone, which sets your server and the teams you play. You only ever face teams in the same Zone and division, from Weekly matches through to the playoffs. You can change the Zone until your first match of the Stage. After that it’s locked for the Stage.

Because match windows are set per Zone, your Zone is really a schedule. If you pick a Zone where the windows fall at 7 PM on nights two of your players work, you’ll miss matches all Stage. Pick the Zone where all five of you have good ping, and check its match windows before you recruit.

Build a roster that shows up

Most Premier teams don’t fall apart because they lose. They fall apart because on Wednesday night only four people log on. That’s why roster size and schedule matter more than raw aim:

• Recruit six or seven, not five. Any five on the roster can play a Weekly match, so a sixth player covers absences. In Open to Elite playoffs, though, the five who queue the first match are locked in for the whole tournament, so know your best five before playoff day.
• Match on schedule first. Ask every player which of your Zone’s windows they can make, every week, for the whole Stage.
• Cover the roles. Duelist, Controller, Initiator and Sentinel, plus someone who’ll call the round. Our guide to building a Valorant 5-stack covers this in more detail.
• Mind the MMR lock. Your division is locked after your first match. You can still add or remove players during the Stage, but not anyone whose MMR would move the team into another division.

The Team Owner creates the team, invites and removes players, and picks the Zone, and can appoint a Team Captain who can also manage the roster. The Owner doesn’t have to play.

Divisions and the path to pro

From the bottom up, the divisions are Open, Intermediate, Advanced and Elite, each split into tiers 1 to 5, then Contender and Invite. Winning your playoff bracket promotes your team at least one division the next Stage. Skip that Stage and you lose the promotion. In Open to Elite there’s no relegation for losing. Your division only drops if your roster’s MMR changes.

To play in Contender or Invite, a player needs Contender Eligibility. In the current or previous Stage, they must have reached a peak rank of Immortal 3 or higher, played for a Contender or Invite team, or played in an Elite 5 playoff. In 2026, the top Invite teams can earn a chance at promotion into their region’s Challengers league. Riot is reshaping VCT for 2027 around open tournaments, and has said Premier may be one of several qualification paths, so check the details for your region before you plan around it.

Where to look in 2026

Valorant Discords, subreddits and LFT threads have plenty of players. But they can’t tell you who’s in your Zone, who can make Wednesday at 7 PM, and who’ll still be around in week seven. A “LF Premier team, Intermediate, Controller main” post gets buried in minutes.

That’s the gap PaxJax fills. Instead of rebuilding your roster every Stage, you can:

• Filter players by region, rank and availability, so the people you find can make your match windows.
• Jump into Valorant game chat to find players who are online and looking right now.
• Send an Invite to Play directly, so getting five people into the lobby takes one tap each.
• Save a standing team with a Looking-for-Team profile, so the same roster comes back next Stage.

Find Your Premier Team

Use the off nights

Practice Matches give you free reps against teams in your division, but they’re short and only on some nights. For more, set up Valorant scrims against teams around your level, and run the week’s Premier map until everyone knows their setups.

The Premier teams that make playoffs aren’t always the ones with the best aim. They have six or seven people who show up, a Zone that fits their evenings, and a plan for the map. Find your five, and a sixth for the night someone can’t make it.

Ready to build your team? Find Valorant players & teams on PaxJax →